Law of the Sea
by Ieyre
Summary: On the final voyage of his life, nothing astounds Gold more than how easy it is to converse with his traveling companions. Takes place aboard the Jolly Roger during the trip to Neverland, Rumplestiltskin shares an important conversation about the past with his five companions. [Four: Snow] She never thought there was something it would be easier to talk about with Gold than David.
1. Emma: Malediction

Her dealings with Hook—'relationship' sounded like something you had with people who didn't say 'matey' or make tired innuendoes about where to stick a sword—had never suggested that the guy was sentimental.

The picture, therefore, felt to her displaced—the only personal object in the Captain's stylish but utilitarian quarters. Wrinkled, faded, frayed around the edges-preserved under glass, quite lovingly, and unmistakably of a woman. She felt herself drawn to it, and wandered closer, before remembering with a jolt his tattoo.

_Milah_.

The sound of the name in her head burned her, made Emma physically step back. She hated it when people pried into her past, so she'd kept the questions to a minimum when dealing with him. It was easier that way. The drawing was enshrined in a velvet casing; it reminded her of the pictures of saints they put in churches, a tribute to times when people at least pretended to believe in something. Curiosity overtook her scruples, and she leaned in closer again.

"An excellent likeness."

Though she was expecting him, Gold's voice made Emma jump. It baffled her that a middle-aged guy with a cane could sneak around on a wooden ship.

They hadn't talked much since getting on.

She heard the steps of a man whose gait—normally so direct, a rhythmic tapping like the ticking of a clock—seemed shiftless and were slower. They had lost their purpose. He _sounded_ older walking across the floorboards of Hook's master bedroom; Emma thought of looking in his eyes to see it. That's where age always started to show first.

He stopped somewhere behind her, close, because she could hear steady breathing. There was nothing else for them to look at but the tattered portrait, a museum of one piece.

"It's beautiful."

"And accurate. It's a self-portrait. The artist was unschooled, but had a natural talent for seeing things for…what they truly were."

"That's Milah, right?"

"Oh, yes," he leaned forward to examine more closely, appreciative of the artistry. "She's of particular interest to you."

"How so?"

"That's Henry's grandmother."

At that moment she knew what a 'pang in the heart' felt like.

"…Neal's mom?"

He nodded. She realized he hadn't taken his eyes off it since he walked in the room. Emma joined in him in his scrutiny, drinking in the face with .

"People often said Bae took after her." She traced eyebrows, a mass of tangled dark hair, that expression that seemed to be looking beyond her and Gold and this unnaturally small room.

Neal had always dreamed of enclosed spaces and warm food. Modest, domestic dreams.

"I think he looked more like you," She replied, finally.

_Looked_. Past tense. She hasn't talked to Gold about Neal. She doesn't want to.

He sighed.

"More's the pity."

Her eyes flicked away from the picture to him to ask a question she doesn't need to ask.

"Did you really kill her?"

"Yes."

She should be horrified by the admission that he'd murdered the mother of his child, but his bald honesty strikes her harder.

"You didn't ask to speak to me about my late wife, surely."

"Uh, no…I didn't. It's something else." She puts it out of her head—she's got to focus, which is what she's good at anyway. Focus is what pulls in bounties, a narrow vision, and Henry is the biggest bounty of her life. "About…magic."

"What about it?" She was channeling her father in that moment, all raw determination and guts. He knew what she wanted, had probably known for days, and was apparently prepared to let her work for it.

"If we're going to…Neverland—I need to be prepared. And I'm not. I know that now." She could feel the butt of her revolver through the coat—a comfort and reminder.

"From your time in the Enchanted Forest?"

"I tried to shoot an ogre," Emma said, flatly. "With a gun."

"I see." Immediately she was playing hardball with a guy who hadn't come the worse out of a deal in two hundred years. "Well, Ms. Swan, I must confess, I'm surprised you didn't ask Regina. Mothers united in the pursuit of their common son—"

"I did. She told me to go to you." Her next words produced a thin smile from him. "She told me you wouldn't have anything better to do."

"Classic. Did the queen warn you of my tendency towards veiled motives?"

"She did. But Regina doesn't know why you're on this boat, Gold. I do."

He met her eyes then, stared, searchingly—puzzling things out, because from what she could tell, that was how he operated. Wait and see, convince other people to do the heavy lifting, that was Gold's way. She didn't think she'd have to argue with him over this, it was something a year ago he would have _persuaded _Emma into wanting.

It surprised her when the man looked back at the drawing as though he had not heard her.

"Before she left with Hook, it never would have occurred to me to raise a hand to my wife." Emma could no longer hear him breathing—something about him felt less human. "It wasn't my way. I couldn't bring myself to fight for her, either. But when I saw Milah again—this was after I became the Dark One, after I lost Baelfire—I had _magic_. I had power, for the first time in my life I felt as though nothing could hurt me—and if it did, I could hurt it _back _tenfold. So when she told me she never loved me, it was so easy to rip out her heart and crush it into dust."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"You have to understand." He crossed to Hook's desk and the impressive high-backed chair. The visual was as startling as his confession. "You _must _understand the magnitude of what you're undertaking."

When she didn't immediately reply, he considered her, thoughtful, putting on the hat of the concerned high school guidance counselor.

"Have you discussed this with your parents?"

"I don't need their permission."

"I'll take that as a 'no.'"

She picked up the only portable object in the room, a cast-iron paperweight, wondering what he'd do to her if she threw it at the back of his head.

"Why does that matter?"

"Your mother and father don't mind traversing Neverland without the aid of magic." He was so mild, so reasonable, a familiar urge to deck him boiled beneath Emma's surface. She sure as hell didn't need life lessons from him. "Why do you?"

"I've seen Mary Margaret shoot an arrow through an ogre's eye, and from what I understand, David's alright with a sword."

"A gift he's passed onto you—and one that you could hone as easily."

She got in his face, matching steely look with impassive brown eyes.

"Look. I'm going to be a lot more useful if I've got an ace-in-the-hole. Like magic. So either you agree to teach me, or we stay in this room until you do."

For about a half second she thought she might've actually scared him. In reality, his stare back lay somewhere on the scale between amused and endeared.

"I can see you're determined." The words rolled off his tongue as does that which tastes familiar . Gently he got out of his chair and pushed past her; he paced up and down the narrow oak slates of the room. He was either thinking or giving her time to think. "There's a question I ask every person I teach—or rather, a question I ask that they ask themselves. How you answer will determine whether I take you on as a pupil or not."

"What do you want to know?"

Rumplestiltskin stopped his forced march; a sudden jerking motion, the breaking of a car. He's stopped in front of his dead wife's picture.

"Why do you want this?"

"I need to save my son."

A choked laugh, racked with irony, bounces off the walls and echoes a thousand times in a second.

"You think _magic_ can save him?"

He is raw pain wrapped in vicious urbanity in that moment, and it makes her want to shake him, shake whatever's haunting him out of him (_and out of her._)

"If you didn't think so, why the hell are you on this boat?"

He blinked and didn't reply—she knew she'd reasoned him into a corner, and it was satisfying in a totally different way than punching Regina or body-slamming Tamara was. If she beat him, she could get something out of it that was worth a hell of lot more than brief satisfaction. His respect paid dividends.

"There's something else I want to know." He concedes her point, informally. "How did it make you feel?"

"How did—"

"Casting the protection spell, assisting Regina," He waved his hand. "Magic. Tell me, honestly."

She didn't hesitate.

"Pretty damn good."

The resignation in his eyes told her that she'd won the battle.

"That's always how it starts."

It was a hollow win at best.

The Savior didn't know what she'd said to change his mind, only that she had. He told her it's because he has too much respect for the art of sorcery to watch Regina butcher teaching it. Emma could see that's a lie right off, or at least a half-truth. He doesn't tend to outright lie, only when she asked him, offhandedly, how he's doing does she see what she calls the honest liar. He doesn't even try to pretend that he's okay.

He's right that her parents aren't happy with the arrangement—it makes sense, he knows them better than she does, in a way. David sees her as his little princess. That frustrates her because of how badly she wants it deep down; it's difficult to fight an impulse she's repressed for almost thirty years when the question has its answer. Mary Margaret sees herself in Emma, fears that Emma might walk her path. During her "classes" all they can see is the Dark One, and it scares Snow and Charming to see him transfer anything of himself to their daughter.

All she can see is Neal's dad.

Neal is the constant, unbroken and unspoken thread that binds them together. She has her mother and father and Regina to remind her of why they got on the Jolly Roger in the first place—but Neal she guards jealously, a secret, sacred tomb deep in the pit of her heart. Only Gold can intrude on her grief, because he's the only one who knows what's been lost. Hook mourns for the mother, her parents for her sake.

Only she and Gold loved him. _Just _him.

He's not touchy-feely. She likes that, neither is she. It's a welcome change from Mary Margaret and David, who are well meaning but relentless in their pushing. They think talking about it will help, but Emma knows that saying the words out loud will only cement the helplessness she feels. Magic is something physical, like weightlifting with the power of your raw _rage_; she prefers to move books across Hook's bolted table with her mind than dwell on what she can't change.

Gold changes. He speaks less, but with more purpose. In their lessons, he makes her repeat what he calls "essential magical truths" so often she wishes for a tape recorder.

"Alright—" she snapped, after the one hundredth recitation. 'Rain in Spain fell mainly on the plain' her ass. "I'll remember the limits of splitting magic—cool your jets, Obi-Wan."

Gold frowned, confused. Confusion was too pedestrian a state for him. He had grown so comfortable in extraordinariness that it made everyone else nervous when he wasn't.

"What did you call me?"

Not much makes her laugh these days, but his cluelessness nearly got her to that place.

"What, you never seen Star Wars, Gold?" Neal hadn't liked Star Wars. He hadn't liked anything not grounded in "what was solidly real", but she'd made him sneak into a divey movie theater in Toledo to watch it anyway. For weeks afterwards Emma gave him crap about being scared, because he'd nearly squeezed her hand numb during the "intense" moments.

"_I guess it hit too close to home, Em." He's joking, laughing it off, not meeting her eyes._

"_Oh, come _on_, Neal. I had some crappy foster homes, but _no way _was your dad on the same level as Darth Vader."_

"I can't say that I have."

The curse hadn't seen fit to give a Scottish pawnbroker false memories of basic pop culture, apparently. It _was _Gold's curse, maybe it wanted to cut him slack, in a weird way. It felt like they were all living in a fantasy movie half the time, who needed the Hollywood stuff?

When they were home again, she wanted to take Henry fishing.

"It's a movie. Obi-Wan's a character. He teaches the main guy about the Force. It's basically magic," she hastily adds, noticing how disconcerted he is. "In their world."

"And I…bear some resemblance to this man?"

"Not that much. He was a _good_ guy."

His mouth turned upward, the facsimile of a smile.

"I can see where the comparison would deteriorate."

"I just feel like I'm the last of the Jedi over here, or something." Again, he looked blank. "Like I'm the last person you're ever going to tell about this."

"Maybe you are."

She stretched her arms, not wanting to waste this break, and leaned on the railing. To the untrained observer he might've been her yoga instructor.

"I thought there were only three certainties in life," She yawned, trying to touch her toes. The boat was too damn small, what she needed more than a shower was a sprint. "Death, taxes, and you outliving everyone."

"There _are _three certainties: the past, the future, and our inability to change either."

His bleakness left her numb, made her drop her foot. _Clunk_.

"You really believe that, don't you?"

"I know it." He breathed deeply of the salt air on the deck and gestured with a finger that they would begin again soon and to not get comfortable. "What happened to this…Obi-Wan, after he taught his hero?"

She abandoned the railing and took her place on his right. Every second is one closer to Henry, and she's not about to waste time.

"He dies. He sacrifices himself so the heroes can get away."

"Doesn't sound much like me."

She knows him. Not like her parents, or Regina—but she knows that expression. Emma saw more of Neal in Gold than she could ever say, because words and names and _deals _were his bag, not hers. But she recognized that resigned hardening in his eyes like she did her own face.

It was the last thing she saw before _he_ let go.

"No. Not at all."


	2. Regina: Benediction

Loathe as she was to say it—and she was very, _very _loathe, on a ship with these five people, all of whom she'd attempted to kill at least once—the solitude was beginning to wear on her. For the third time that day, Snow had, in front of the whole crew, looked her former stepmother square in the face and asked for her "input" on their mission to recover Henry. What made it worse were the witnesses to these increasingly desperate displays of compassion. David was all tense jaw and fierce protectiveness, uninterested in fifth and sixth chances.

Gold's detached, knowing irony made her fingers itch to conjure a fireball and torch the hull.

How Regina felt wasn't the point. Playing happy family hadn't been her strong suit when she'd shared a household with Snow White; there were too many fresh wounds to make the experience pleasant in anything more than small doses. Emma she could stomach because of their goal (_Henry, all for Henry), _but the already lone wolf had retreated even further into herself, and Regina had no patience to follow her.

Hook was pleasant enough company, given the right…conditions. He was also myopic to the point of being suicidal. If she didn't need them both to get to her son, she'd have been perfectly fine with he and Rumplestiltskin falling off the boat while strangling each other. Alas, the magical orb she was now looking at and the vessel that it was leading guaranteed the necessity of their immediate survival.

The queen raised her hand to touch the point on the globe that glowed brightest. It was icy cold on the tip of her finger, not the comfort she wanted or expected it to be.

Burning cold.

Regina shivered and stepped backwards. The main floor cabin of the Jolly Roger was a mess; she bumped into one of the many unlabeled crates that pirates deemed necessary to prove their unfettered masculinity. Her inner mayor longed to alphabetize, if for no other reason than to give her hands something to do. The good Captain, having only one to spare, apparently had better uses for it than keeping this floating rat pit habitable.

This trip gave her too much time for self-reflection. She had realized that Hook was what she used to be: utterly single-minded. She envied him that. The hatred he felt for Rumplestiltskin was clean and unambiguous, her head and heart were a jumbled up muddle. Regina hated the imp as well, of course, but enough to cross worlds? He got her hackles up, and she'd relished thoughts of his slow demise, of him being brought low many times—not nothing all-consuming.

Nothing like what she felt about Snow.

Truthfully—Snow and Rumple were two of the precious remaining constants of her life left. Her mother's plan had shifted form controlling the Dark One to killing him so fast she'd hardly had time to think about the practical consequences of the step for her life. She hadn't considered what a world without Rumplestiltskin would really look like.

It conjured up memories of her first night out of the nursery—freeing and terrifying at the same time.

"Staring at it won't make it work any better."

Regina closed her eyes at the sound of the familiar voice.

"I can't sleep." She rubbed her temples; it was late and she was too tired to pretend otherwise. Gold, she was sure, was watching her through the dark, inscrutable. His eyes peering out at her, from behind bars or through the curtains of a window in a princess' tower—were nothing new.

Maybe he wanted something. Gold didn't and had never cared about _her_, but if you caught him in the right mood he could make you believe he did. Calculated sympathy was better than the real thing—or it could be, if he wanted something from you badly enough.

"You never struck me as the type who needed a nightlight." She spared him the sharp retort, instead returning to staring at the globe, a sentry at her post. "You should try to sleep."

Regina snorted, half expecting him to lay another single red rose in front of her. _The hypocrite._

"Now you're concerned about my welfare."

"Perhaps I just find you more pleasant rested."

"I thought you were angry with me." _I liked you better that way. I prefer to know where we stand. Anger makes you more…human._

He raised a white flag by way of a hand, the fingers curled in a supplication in front of his face. The gesture bore none of the usual flourishes or dramatics that made him so much larger than other people to her.

"Belle has her memories again."

Just the tired wave of the lined hand from a middle-aged pawnbroker.

"So what, no harm done?"

"You've done worse to her." A small sigh reached her ears, and the sound of a body heavily leaning against a cane. It might've been that she couldn't see him, only knew he was there from his sparse words and that vaguely unsettling feeling his eyes on her had always brought—but the thought occurs, fresh and that he actually needs that cane to stand. "She's alive, and whole, and as safe as she'll ever be. At this point, that's all I can hope for."

"How _generous _of you." She sneered, knowing that for him, it was. Lacey, with her vulgarity and fastness wrapped in Belle-shaped wrapping had perhaps knocked her off the pedestal. "Is that why you left her behind? Didn't want to tempt Hook or me?"

"Someone needs to make sure the town isn't razed to the ground in the absence of its great heroes." _And us two. _She tossed her head; the practiced imperiousness of a lifetime being groomed for it wouldn't wear off easily.

"They can burn for all I care."

"You don't believe that. What would a queen—or mayor—be without subjects?"

"I don't _want _to be queen anymore." She snapped her mouth shut again. Hadn't even admitted that to herself and she'd told him, handed over yet another weapon to be used against her. Does she _want_ that taunting, Regina wondered, does that needling he's so skilled at crafting give her a feeling of importance?

Does she like being caught in the webs he spins?

The globe was the answer to only one question. He stepped into the orb's light next to her.

"Curious piece of magic," he remarked, suddenly. "One of a kind."

"Where'd you get it?"

"Your mother brought it over on this ship." He caressed the artifact reverently, tracing where she had touched it a few minutes earlier as if he'd seen it. The smoothness of his voice faded into something soft and not sweet, approaching the realm of real. Regret? "As a bargaining chip."

She bit her lip. Cora—mother, tyrant, queen—shaky ground. Their beginning and an end they shared.

"What did she want for it?"

"You know what she wanted."

_Of course._ Her shoulders are too square to feel the weight, her soul too brittle to be moved.

"_You_ told her about the vault."

"She didn't need my help to find you, Regina. She was your mother." He stepped around her, to the other side of the globe. "What she wanted was me out of the town and her way—and she had an advantage few can boast of to accomplish her goal."

"What's that?"

"She knew me very, very well."

It dimmed for a fraction of a second, then flared up again.

"So it works?"

"It's how I found my son." He was so small in that moment she almost didn't know the man she was looking at.

Henry's father, Rumplestiltskin's son. Another virtually untouched subject between them. The pretense he'd constructed that they were alike and shared something fell like the decaying branches of her favorite apple tree.

"I've known you for forty years. I didn't even know you _had_ a son."

"I didn't want you to know." His smile doesn't reach his eyes—never has. "I'm sure it never even occurred to you that I was capable of fathering one."

"My mother knew." She had brought the globe for _him_, it dawned on her, with giving it to him in mind. "From Hook?"

"No, no—I told her."

"You did? Why?"

"She asked me a question and I answered." He was somewhere else entirely. "There isn't always a clear reason. Perhaps it was ill-advised…the point is that she asked. She was the first person in nearly two hundred and twenty years to ask."

"It doesn't matter _now_, I guess."

Her words were so icy she could see her own breath. Gold knew her well enough to recognize that tone.

"Regina…"

"Save it, will you? I know you," she spat, all of her pain and frustration at the inaction this damn _boat_ afforded them bubbling to the surface. "I know what you're going to say."

"And what is that?"

"That I'm _pathetic_ for mourning her, when the only reason I ever wanted magic in the first place was to get rid of her—to get her out of my life. But here I am, forty years on, still caring what she thinks and wanting her to…" She'd cried in front of him countless times—for stupider, less justified reasons than this. For whatever reason (maybe it was missing Henry or the incessant rocking of this damn boat) his strangely blank and receptive face made the prospect of Rumplestiltskin seeing her so weak unbearable.

"Is that what I would say?" It was not a rhetorical question, he truly wanted to know what she thought.

"That and—you'd tell me that you were justified because she was going to kill everyone and Henry would never have forgiven me."

Having said everything in one breath, she stopped for air, deflated. His voice whispered those words in her ear; that was all it was, a voice inside her, telling her the things she already knew in a guise she was used to believing.

"That…is all very true. And I believe it." He beveled on one foot, returning to his spot at her side. "But that wasn't what I was going to say." He was very close to her, for a moment she thought he was going to lay a hand on her arm. "She was your mother."

"I know _that_."

"Don't feel guilty for being sad. Whatever else she was—she was your _mother._"

"I…" Knees shaking—how long had she been standing here, waiting for that globe to give her what she really wanted? He was like that globe, a source of wisdom to go to for any and all problems, cold and impersonal, dangling the prospect of the happiness just out of reach. "You said she never did me any favors."

"She didn't. She never did me any either, but it didn't stop me from wanting—" He stopped himself.

"You—" Trying not to think about something: a surefire way to fill your head with revolting thoughts. "And my _mother_?"

"I thought she told you how she beat me." She spun her head around to gape at him, mind whirring at the innuendo and desperately wishing for a selective amnesia curse on the last three minutes of her life. "Clearly without specificity."

"Clearly."

"What is the only thing you've ever been able to hold against me, Regina?" he asked, impatiently, with that schoolmaster voice he always fell back on.

"Belle, I suppose," she conceded, grudgingly.

"We all have our own particular brand of weakness."

Regina let out a laugh that to his ears was probably more of a hacking cough. She should be sickened. She was—except that as was so often the case, the feeling was muddled together with understanding and…clarity.

Over Daniel's body, Cora told her that love was an illusion. If she'd felt it for this man of all men, who could blame her?

"I thought her death would be more…I thought I'd be sadder than I am." She rose from her seat, still shaky. "But it's as though a stranger's dead."

"It's only after our parents die that they become real people to us."

"I never had a _chance_ to know the real her." Curiosity ate at her, those last few moments had been scraps at the table. She wanted more. "What was she like?"

"Strong-willed. Determined. Beautiful." Regina had never heard anyone admire her mother so baldly; she herself never spoke her childhood idolatry out loud. "Cold-blooded enough to have taken her heart out in the first place."

"You taught her that, didn't you?" She mourned not only her mother, but the mother she might've known in a different life. The familiar urge to blame someone crackled within her, and there is no one who deserves blame more than this man, this imp. Who is _he_ to judge her mother's choices, of all people?

"Not to use on herself. If I had known…" He wasn't judging her, if there was regret it was his own. He shut his mouth tightly, no willingness to speak of denials, or forked roads. "What do you want from me—a honeyed balm for your soul, or the truth?"

"Both," she said, in a strangled whisper. His eyes, hard and inhuman with the light glinting off them, became a man's again as the request filtered through his ears to his mind."…How could she have done that?"

"Take out her own heart?"

"That and…everything else." The queen, the king, Daniel—everything afterwards, too—the mirror, the cricket, the ruse, the knife. "If she'd had it, what would that have changed?"

"She felt she needed to."

"Daniel might've lived." She was not afraid of what ifs, even if they would only make her more miserable. "She thought she was doing me a _favor_ by stopping me from marrying him."

"She wanted to spare you what she believed was the worst fate imaginable." He stopped. "Poverty and powerlessness. What she grew up with."

Her father had once said the same thing to her, almost identical.

"No matter how well-fed you are, the feeling of an empty stomach never truly leaves. It sinks into your bones." He drifted off, distracted by something the globe made me think of, something, she suspected, that was not Henry. "Of course, there are worse things than being poor."

She tried to imagine her mother poor, and then him. Rumplestiltskin the peasant, shabby and ordinary. His son was a normal man, it followed that he had been one as well. If he _became_ the Dark One, he must've been something before. Magic and power and wealth were so wrapped up in her image of him that she was almost disappointed, like a child upon learning that Santa Claus isn't real.

"It will be light in a few hours." He snapped himself out of recollection. "It's difficult to sleep on a ship in open water in any conditions."

"I can't—" She stopped, then forced herself to spit out the rest. "Leave him."

As long as the light burned, he was alive. As long as she could see it, she had proof. She was as close to him in this cabin as she could be.

"I can keep watch for you."

"You—"

"—Don't need to sleep. You do."

"If anything changes…"

"I'll tell you." He hobbled over to the door, and in a surprisingly gentlemanly turn, opened the door for her. "You'll need your strength for what lies ahead."

She arched one eyebrow perfectly and glided past him.

"Is that a promise?

"Call it intuition. Everyone on this ship will play their part."

"And here I thought you were the one other person I could count on." Forgetting she was supposed to still be angry, as she passed him Regina laid one hand on his arm to steady herself. He stumbled a little, and she realized that his leg made it so she could no longer lean on him—in any sense of the word.

"To do what?"

"To not be a 'team player.'" He laughed. "I mean it—Snow and Charming are bad enough. Next you'll be extolling Hook's virtues."

"The Captain _is_ quite an adept sailor—he may yet have other uses." He smiled, grim and determined. "He's good at not dying: the human equivalent of a cockroach."

"That sounds more like you," she called over her shoulder, walking too briskly for him to get in any final shots.

Her tiny room was less oppressive then it had been three hours of insomnia earlier. She was so tired the cramped quarters no longer made a difference to her. Fatigue had lead her to opening up to Rumple, after all. If she were more principled, disappointment would have marred her sleep. Her vow to never confide in him again had been thrown overboard with yesterday's chamber pots.

The queen yawned and burrowed into the blanket in her cot. This truce between them, this re-allying, was only temporary. Once they got Henry back and she no longer needed his help, she'd think of some _new _way to get rid of him. Something cruel and diabolical, something that befitted him. The thought was dreamy and pleasant, she drifted off to it, comforted by the readjustment.

Much later, she would recall that night of sleep—and think of it as the only thing he'd ever given her with no price.

**As we get closer to the premiere, spoilers are probably going to canonball these to a degree, so I'm trying to enjoy the ride while I can. Next up, David.  
**


	3. Charming: Equivalence

The roll of the deck that Snow found so comforting made him sick.

Apples. Hook had a bushel of apples he wanted pulled from the hold—David grimaced at the very word. Nothing sounded appetizing to him right now, and apples and his family had a complicated relationship. But Hook had assured him in his most colorful language that scurvy would kill them all before the mermaids did, so he was going down into the bowels of the ship (how _evocative_) to haul them up. Say nothing else about him, he was a team player.

The belly of the Jolly Roger was wide and deep—thin slits of light shone through the slats, dividing the room into subsections that reminded David of the bars of a prison. He peered through the fetid gloom, trying to make out the faded lettering on all of the captain's dubious food stores.

A loud creak drew his attention to the corner.

"…_Gold_?"

A figure weakly groaned.

"Are you alright?" His natural instinct to help pulled him to the older man's side like a magnet. Rumplestiltskin pushed his hand away, and David, having had to restrain the man from strangling people in the town more than once was surprised by how limp the warning grip on his wrist was.

"I'm fine. I only hate the sea. It's a common enough condition."

"Don't I know it," he smiled, grimly. "No sea legs?"

"None whatsoever."

Laughing lightly (and uncomfortably, because no matter how much time has passed he has never been at ease around the Dark One) he peered through the grime of the room. There was a cluster of food stores in the center of the room. Even with the low lighting, the dirt and heavy smell of brine did not inspire much confidence.

"You see a barrel of passable fruit around here?" Gold was about to reply when the smell rising up from one worn oaken barrel hit Charming full-on.

"…In a manner of speaking."

The prince took several inelegant steps backwards, quickly covering his mou.

"Well, that's it for apples." He leaned back on one foot and turned to the perpetrator. "You want to tell Regina, or should I?"

"If she wants to poison us all, don't worry: she'll think of another way."

He looked thinner than Charming had ever seen him, worn out and colorless. Emma had privately expressed her doubt that the man was sleeping—now he questioned if Rumplestiltskin was eating.

Even if he _was_ immortal, there was something unnatural about it.

"You know, if you get seasick, I don't think hanging out as close to the water as it's possible to be is a good idea."

Gold, holding his head between his knees, did not reply. David, who would have welcomed even a sarcastic quip just to prove this was the same _guy_, furrowed his brow.

"I'm surprised you can even _get _seasick."

The all-powerful Dark One hauled himself up, wobbled, and fixed David with a stare that suggested he was speaking to a Simpleton.

"And why is that?" 

The prince hesitated. 'Because I assumed there was a mystical cure for nausea' sounded too much like David Nolan.

"Because you're…you. The Dark One." The Dark One didn't get sick, did he? He had the sudden mental image of Gold laid up in bed, Belle fussing over him while bottles of Nyquil floated above his head.

"And?" Gold tapped the wall he was leaning on with one finger, impatient. "What of it?" 

"You've traveled everywhere. I guess I just figured you would be used to it by now."

"Wanderlust is an epidemic among the young," he muttered. "I hate travel, I always have."

Mr. Gold, Rumplestiltskin—the _homebody_? The domestic?

"But everyone in the kingdom knew you—you'd been everywhere."

"From necessity, not desire. There were pieces I needed to move around, in order to find my…" The old man (for that's what he was and in that moment, it showed) jerked himself out of the sentence by force. David tried to think of something to ease the tension of the moment—he had guessed what was really bothering Gold, but had not known whether anything he could say was even welcome.

In truth, there was nothing he could say. He knew that better than most.

"If you want to lie down, no one would blame you."

"In the middle of the day?" He let out a harsh snort. David had half-expected the impish side of Rumplestiltskin to materialize the closer they got to Neverland and magic, not this man: more human than even Mr. Gold. "Hardly the actions of the consummate sailor."

"None of us care about that except—" Gold broke eye contact with him. "Is _that_ why you're down here—Hook?"

"It's a stupid thing to care about, I know." Rumplestiltskin fidgeted, visibly embarrassed. Charming stifled a laugh. He reached into his pocket for a nonexistent phone. More than anything, he needed someone equipped for this—he needed _Belle_. "I suppose I'm only human—figuratively speaking."

"I hate traveling by boat too." Resigned, he planted himself on a crate of what smelled like rotting turnips, pulling a face. "What I wouldn't give for solid ground right now…"

The changing of the subject, however clumsy, did its job. Whatever dark thoughts Gold has been dwelling on, David was able to distract him at least momentarily, and his sometime ally sat down on a crate next to him.

"That's the shepherd in you." He stretched his bad leg out, wincing. "Herding is an occupation of the earth—solid, dependable, straightforward. In the land without magic, shepherds are sacred, did you know that?"

"I haven't seen a sheep since I left the farm."

Rumplestiltskin's mouth twitched upward for a second.

"They haven't changed."

"I miss them." He _did_, it took saying it out loud for him to realize that. He missed life on the farm, not just his mother.

"Less demanding than cows and gentler than horses." Gold's accent thickened fondly. "Pliant—sheep make every man a king of sorts."

David thought of the day he'd gone back to tell his mother of his marriage to Abigail. She'd given him the ring on Snow's left hand now. He couldn't remember anything else from that last visit, had not bothered to imprint the farm into his memory. It was just her face, too sharp against a clouded background.

"It doesn't matter where we go or what we do, something of the most…uncomplicated part of our lives stays with us for the rest. It's inescapable."

"Like the life you gave me?" he asked, dryly.

"That was a role you were always meant to play—but not one that defines you." Gold smiled slyly, a little piece of the Old World for Charming to savor. "What tethers you to it now? Not the bonds of blood or upbringing, surely."

"Snow."

He nodded.

"It's precisely those who find power a burden that are the best suited to wield it."

"The people who want it least?" David leaned back on the hull with the turning of the tide. It was a hearty, blustery day; the sea was churning with his thoughts. "I never thought of it that way."

"Heavy weighs the crown of the king." The older man produced an elegant handkerchief from his pocket and promptly gagged into it. "One of life's…_many_ ironies."

"If I could—I wouldn't go back, exactly. It's complicated…part of me thinks I want to. Life on the farm was…simpler."

"Simple?" To David's surprise, Gold shook his head, disbelieving. "In some ways…but not easy, surely. Your parents were desperate people."

"I guess they wanted me to think things were simpler than they really were."

"That's…natural for a parent. You want to protect your children from the world…" Gold, already pale and emaciated, retreated into himself further. Charming could see a door closing in front of his eyes. "From your own faults and weaknesses. The children are always the last to know."

"My mother never hid who she was from me." He straightened, the familiar rush of defensiveness Snow jokingly named "the Charming factor" kicking in.

"She didn't want you to know about your brother…" He trailed off, vaguely. "But you're right. She was a good woman."

The urge to run his sword through something—the inaction that sea travel necessitated had wound him up more than usual—left him empty just as fast. As he looked down at Gold, shrunken from grief and the physical wearing, clutching the side of a barrel of apples he'd been sick in, something occurred to him.

This man believed in good.

It was one thing to be Regina, misplaced and deluded and so mixed up that Snow White was the evil one. Rumplestiltskin, he was sure, clever man—insanity and sobriety in one, never doubted what he was. Had always _really_ known.

Maybe he had been good, once.

"Do _you_ ever…want to go back?"

"To a simpler time?" The prince nodded. "I don't believe in such a thing. I did, once—…" Whatever Gold was thinking, it hung, unspoken, casting a pall over the room. He sucked in a long breath and exhaled. "The truth is that you can't go back. There's never anything to go back _to._"

David nodded.

"You can only go forward."

"Hook will be expecting that fruit, Charming." He rose, shaking off the prince's encore attempts to help him to his feet again. "Perhaps if I show him their _altered condition_ he'll think better of it."

"Forget it. There aren't any. I'll tell him that I couldn't find them."

"Strictly speaking, that isn't _true._"

David sighed heavily. "Honorable dealings" in a strictly legalistic sense—in short, as close to a code as Rumplestiltskin had, wearied him. He had a feeling Gold wanted to whack someone with his cane in the same way that he wanted to cut off a dragon's head. Hook was just the easiest target.

"Can't you make them disappear?"

"Of course I can. So can you."

"How—" Gold flourished, then pointed his index finger over the dumbfounded David's shoulder. When he turned, he could see the broad porthole at the stern of the ship was three times larger than it had been. "…Oh."

Shooting the sorcerer a rueful look, he dragged the barrel of ruined fruit to the window and (clumsily) hauled it over his shoulder and into the ocean, where it plopped with the gusto of a cast iron anvil.

"Seems like a waste of food." The wooden barrel bobbed on the water energetically—the winds were fast that day, the Jolly Roger moving swiftly, more urgently than it had for their whole voyage. A few seconds later it was completely out of sight.

"How anyone can even think of eating on this behemoth is beyond me."

"It's like you said—" He snapped the porthole shut and turned back around. "Life moves on, we've got to keep going forward. That _includes_ eating."

He gave him that patented Charming do-gooder look, the one that suggested he would be watching Gold at the next meal to make sure he didn't shove his plate out of any magically created orifices in the side of the boat.

"It doesn't matter. Soon we'll be in Neverland, and food will be the last thing on anybody's mind."

"You know," Charming commented, brushing past him to ascend into the land of the living. "A part of me thinks you threw up in that thing just to have an excuse to pick a fight."

As he gripped the first rung of the ladder, the reply he heard muttered under Gold's breath surprised him.

"You'd hate him."

He stopped.

"What exactly did he do to you?" He'd gathered there was a woman involved, that much was obvious from any given five minutes spent around Hook. Emma seemed to know more of the details, but clarification on that score was the last thing on her mind at the moment and he'd been fine not pressing.

Jaw clenched, the other man did not immediately answer. Clearly he was pondering whether to answer at all.

"He _stole_ my—" Rumplestiltskin stopped himself—suddenly, violently, and the uncontrollable loathing that Hook inspired (was it _Hook_ inspired?) disappeared. In its place was a flicker of resignation. He blinked, and for a moment David thought he could see the trace of someone else. "My wife…left me for him."

"_That's_ why you hate Hook?"

"No. That's not why I hate him. That's why he deserves to _suffer_," he hissed. He could shift between human and feral animal like a chameleon, the switch was becoming more and more volatile the longer the man spent on the boat. "No. He…told me to fight for her."

"What?"

"He handed me a sword and he told me to _duel _him for her. And if I couldn't take her back by force…I deserved to lose her." The cane splintered at the grip of a man who was known for pointedly tethering the violence he portioned out. Whether it was magic or a hundred years of anger unleashed in a moment was hard to tell. "But I couldn't…I couldn't fight. My leg was…it made it so I couldn't…but I didn't want to…"

The word 'leg' turned him, changed the hatred and fear into something Charming thought he might recognize, even without looking the man in the eye.

"I couldn't leave him with _nobody._"

Gold, whose voice, normally so sleek and urbane and _deliberate_, was shaking and weak and _small_. Had he ever said these words out loud to anyone? Or had they simply twisted 'round his mind until they'd twisted it, made it unrecognizable?

"A sword isn't the only way to fight for someone, Gold," he turned around, at last. Believing it, knowing it.

"No, it isn't. It isn't the only way to fail, either."

They shared a long look. Charming was the first to blink, and he took it as a sign and began climbing, rung by rung. When he reached the top, he pulled a small packet from his back pocket and threw it over his shoulder.

Gold caught it in the air.

"This is—?"

"Dramamine. It'll help with the nausea. Take some, lie down for a bit, then come up to the galley and have a bite."

"What do you—?"

"I'm not _you_. I can do things from the goodness of my heart every once in awhile." He pulled himself through the trap door, glad to be out of the dragon's den. He was ready for Neverland, no matter the risks. Solid land and one step closer to Henry.

"You _can._ It doesn't mean you will." The echoey, disembodied voice below his feet sounded annoyed.

"Think of it as a gift." Kneeling down, the prince stuck his head back through to speak to him directly. "From one _farm boy_ to another."

He dropped the trap door with finality, and walking away, savored that rarest of all pleasures: the last word.

**Thank you for everyone who has read and enjoyed this thus far—two chapters left, which if all goes well, will be done before the season 3 premiere comes and renders this all non-canon compliant. Feedback is always appreciated!**


	4. Snow White: Absolution

She remembered buying her plum pea coat on clearance at the Portland outlet mall—that, she had since figured out, was one of her more mundane cursememories, going to the "big city" to shop, her lonely hearts Saturday night. It could barely protect against late November in Maine; decidedly form over function, which was the mistake of Ms. Blanchard the fourth grade teacher, a woman whose skin she had unwittingly lived in for almost three decades, and not Snow, the bandit outlaw who had learned how to skin animals just to keep warm at night.

On the deck of a ship sailing through preternaturally icy waters, it was little better than a purple decoration.

Mary Margaret didn't mind. She deserved the cold, for not bringing an ugly but practical thermal parka. And for other reasons.

"It appears that on this voyage, even solitude must be enjoyed in company."

She spun around, one hand lunging at the dagger she kept hidden in her pocket while the other reached for a bow that wasn't there. Her "assailant" stepped back, less from surprise than from bemusement at the over reaction.

"Mr. Gold…" She heaved a relieved sigh. He was standing a few feet away from her on the deck, wearing the same black suit and inscrutable expression he'd always worn—in Storybrooke, anyway. The difference between his Enchanted Forest persona and cursed self was, in her estimation, more dramatic than almost anyone's. In a town with fairies, werewolves and magic talking crickets, that was a bold claim. The polished and smooth pawnbroker was all trilled r's and vague threats lurking just below a thin veneer of sinister urbanity. The off-kilter imp, giggling, twirling, the bells and whistles of Dark Magic personified, teetering on the edge of sanity hardly seemed like he could be the same man.

That penetrating look mesmerized her in both worlds. It unsettled her, to recall mottled green-grey flesh against her bare cheek.

"Call me Rumplestiltskin." In the Enchanted Forest he would have swept an elaborate, deferential and ironic bow—here he merely nodded his head, a metaphoric tip of the hat. Her coat was impractical, but his Armani suit dwarfed it by a ridiculous factor of ten. The pawnbroker was so close that in the moonlight—for it was a perfectly clear and chilling evening, and the celestial light drew her eyes more deliberately to him, casting a spotlight on the man—she could see the dirt on a three thousand dollar jacket collar. "We've known each other long enough."

He wasn't using magic to keep it clean.

"I don't think of you like that when you're…" She flushed at the implication.

"Human?" Gold provided, casually. "Free of scales? Though the outward appearance is different…I assure you, everything that matters is the same."

"That isn't what I meant," she replied, softly.

Snow turned back to the ocean, trying to ignore Rumplestiltskin's pointed scrutiny.

"When we get to Neverland, will you change back?" she finally said, not comfortable enough with him to keep silent company for long. He must've come out here for an escape from the claustrophobic inner cabin, as she had. The woman knew the less control she gave him over their dialogue, the sooner he would get bored and leave again.

"Hard to say. It's possible. You might wish to warn Ms. Swan, lest she be…_alarmed._" His thin smile widened.

"I don't think there's anything left in any world that could surprise Emma."

He nodded, and leaning more heavily on the barrier, adopted a conversational posture.

"Neverland is powered by belief, both of the collective and the individual." Snow drew her coat more tightly around her. "It is only as dangerous as the minds of its inhabitants. That is the key to our survival—or rather, why _you_ are."

Shrewd eyes bored through the side of her head.

"I don't know what you mean." That uncomfortable, pricking sensation she associated with him returned, and she craned her head farther over the side of the boat, preferring the blasting of sea air to his scrutiny.

"Your highness, you are _saturated _in faith."

Once she would have straightened proudly at such an accusation. Now she avoided looking in the eye, sure she would recognize something shared between them.

"I've always tried to believe the best in people."

Snow had never felt more like a little girl saying what she believed.

"And you're well aware of what that's cost you." He leaned up against the railing next to her, joining the young ruler in her appraisal of the night air, the gold handle of his cane sticking out over the edge. "Look at Regina."

"What _about_ Regina?"

"After everything she's done to you…the anathema she's volleyed at you since you were a little girl—" He fiddled with the large opal ring on his finger, idly, rolling around on his palm, disarmingly controlled. "Even when I _proved_ to you nothing you did could change anything, you still can't bring yourself to hate her."

"You _wanted_ Regina to fail that test."

"No. I merely knew she wouldn't pass." He turned to appraise her more sharply, and she found herself shrinking from it, despite her earlier resolve. "So did you, at least intellectually. Faith in Regina returning to the light is faith unfettered. It's believing in the possibility of anything."

"I don't believe in _you_," she snapped, acidly. She'd been doing that more and more lately, losing the patience she'd spent a lifetime cultivating at a moment's notice, angry at herself and everyone else. But Queen Eva's lessons about the politeness and gentility a princess owed her subjects were drilled so firmly as to be reflexive, and her face burned with embarrassment. "I'm—sorry."

"Don't be." He smiled, and if it had been any other man of his age, she would have thought it was with fondness. "I'm glad. It shows good sense on your part."

"Everyone needs someone to have faith in them." The crashing of waves beneath them—at open sea, even when it was calm the water roared—dwarfed her voice. "Even Regina."

"Ah, but she has Henry now. False belief in her capacity to change is no longer your burden." She jerked her head around. Mr. Gold was not looking at her. "Of course, she may still need you. There are some things even a child can't forgive."

He petered out and stared at an invisible point on the horizon. In that moment, it struck her how _hard_ he was trying to hide his grief. He no longer moved or spoke without obvious reason. The insular man was trapped by both mind and memory; nothing but their destination interested him, all conversation for the once colorful wordsmith was strictly utilitarian. It was as if Neal's death had made life so pointless that if he did not remind himself, he would forget to breathe.

Snow did not think she had ever seen someone so lost.

"Belle believes in you, doesn't she?"

She was curious about the young woman who stood, ever faithful, at the Dark One's side—the woman he'd insisted stay and protect a town she knew meant very little to him. Red was Belle's friend, and it was from her that she'd first heard about her, on one of the precious few nights of peace their family had ever known—the night of the 'welcome back' party.

"_Belle's out." Ruby sidled up to David and her. "She just texted," her friend clarified, more to Charming than her._

"_That's too bad. She would have enjoyed this."  
_

"_Yeah, well—" She shot him a significant look. "_He _wasn't invited, and I think she felt awkward coming alone."_

"_Who's Belle?" Snow asked, looking between the two, confused. _

"_New in town. She's super sweet—you'll like her." Red wrinkled her nose. "Just don't judge her on her taste in men."_

_She looked over at her husband, who was torn between embarrassment and amusement._

"_She's Gold's girlfriend."_

"_Gold's _what?_" she sputtered, and Red waved her disbelief off. She'd clearly had this conversation before._

"_His…well, they're not really together, from what Belle tells me. But they're dating—taking it slow." Ruby rolled her eyes good-naturedly. "I know some girls will do anything to change a guy, but she might be taking it a bit far…"_

"_Did _you_ know about this?" she asked, turning to David._

"_He told me about it back in our land—"_

"_Wait, they were together back in _our _land?" She hadn't even met the poor woman and she was already questioning her sanity. "And you _discussed _it with him?"_

"_He mentioned it to me once—and not in any detail." Her eyebrows flew to the ceiling. "Trust me, Snow—it's not what you think. She's a good person."_

"_Then what is she doing with him?"_

"Belle is very like you, you know." Snow clasped her hands together. Apparently grief had not diminished his ability to intuit her thoughts. "Ever the champion of hopeless causes."

"Nobody's completely hopeless."

"Didn't you just promise never to lay your doe-eyed optimism at my doorstep?"

She had—and Snow felt she was keeping her word. After all the years, Rumplestiltskin was still a moral enigma to her. He was the person whose presence on this boat—and in this mission to recover her grandson—she understood the least. Though he was Henry's grandfather in blood, just as David was, his role in the family unit was precarious. With Regina he was openly hostile half the time. Emma and he were mutually tolerant on their best days. With his most direct link to Henry, his son, he had been estranged at best. It made Mary Margaret heartsick to think that the last conversation he and Neal had was an argument, but from the biting exchange he'd shared with David in the park, she was sure this was the case.

Towards Henry himself he'd never shown any interest beyond the pragmatic efficacy he saw in everyone. Regina was an open book when it came to what drove her—he was decidedly guarded, by contrast, always difficult to pin down. That he might be motivated by love of a child, however twisted, had never occurred to her. She did not believe he was a man prone to emotional demonstrativeness by either nature or the hand life had dealt him.

"I never thought you needed it before now."

"My son died thinking me a monster, Ms. Blanchard—and he was right. But now it doesn't matter."

"Why not?"

"Because even monsters have their uses." He pointed to his face, inviting her in to his confidence. "I will save my grandson, by whatever means I deem necessary. Trust me when I tell you that Pan has no interest in _just_ wars."

The thirst for justice, for the _peace_ she and her family had earned, flared up inside her, and for a moment she felt the urge to play by his rules—to hurt something or someone else before she was hurt again. Just as quickly it passed, leaving the faint chalk outline of something she should be ashamed of.

"I've been farther down _that_ path than I ever wanted to go."

"How can _you_ of all women regret Cora?"

"She needed to be stopped, I know that, but…that's not why I did it." Snow tried to spy a light on the distant coast, anything but darkness and too-bright stars. "I wanted to do it. I thought that would make up for my mother, make me feel better—I know that sounds crazy…"

"It doesn't."

It was so easy to pour herself out like this to him, to confess—not like telling Charming, wonderful and clear conscienced, whom she loved and, more to the point—loved her. Charming, already willing to die for her soul, would convince Snow she was still the girl whose greatest crime in his eyes was stealing her own wedding ring.

But she wasn't looking for condemnation or excuses. She wanted the clinical assessment of her soul she knew him capable of.

"You're perfectly sane. To strike out in anger—vengeance—is as natural as it is empty." Gold considered her dispassionately, and for a minute he was her attorney again. She felt secure in him, which was a dangerous and contradictory emotion to associate with this man. "Tell me, did saving Regina assuage your guilt?"

"No."

"If you could go back, would you change what you did?"

"Yes…I don't know." She dragged one hand along the worn wood of the railing. "Maybe."

"I wonder if you want a defense or a prosecution." He was so detached, so philosophical—and leading. More Sigmund Freud than Archie Hopper. "Do you wish you'd let me die in her place?"

"Between the two of you, Cora was the more dangerous, for my family and the town, but…" she stumbled over her next words. "I think I'd feel better if I _had_ let you die."

For a long moment he said nothing, weighing her heavy confession. He was neither surprised nor offended.

"…You're a good woman." He heavily sighed, and she wondered if he wished she had, too. "I told you how to do it, provided the means. Let me take the burden. Cora's death is one sin among many for me."

The sea stretched _ad infinitum _before them, and hard sea wind blew up and across their faces. Her skin was cracking—her cheek was the only dry thing on this ship. It was an odd thing to occur to her in that moment, but it did.

"I think we both deserve to feel the like this."

"You'll be a fine queen when the time comes, your highness." He unwound the knitted scarf he was wearing from around his neck and handed it to her. "Take it…it will get colder before it warms up."

Snow stared at the outstretched hand for a moment—then, wordlessly, accepted the gift. He nodded politely, picked up his cane, and walked away.

She watched him until he rounded the corner. The dull tapping of a cane on damp wood echoed faintly long after he was out of sight, around the bow of the boat and (presumably) down into his cabin below.

The strip of cloth hung from her hands, limp.

Mary Margaret Blanchard shivered again.


End file.
